Syncing 16TB of photos from PC to NAS, what option to use?

[moshimoshi]

I want to sync and keep synced my photo catalog (around 16TB) from my PC to my NAS. I want to know what options to use?
Synology Drive? Just mount a folder using SAMBA or NFS?
What software to use for sync? Resilio? Allway Sync? Syncthing?
Please advice!
Thank you!

 

[moshimoshi]

anyone? thanks

 

[Rusty]

Everything you mentioned will do the job. It's up to you to give it a go and see what solution will work best for you.

 

[jeyare]

It depends on the purpose ("photo catalog" isn't enough for consideration).

For single user:
Local (LAN) transfer doesn't need the sync. Mounting is quite better. In this case, is the Drive useless layer.
WAN sync has diff. requirements than LAN.
Btw, for NFS sync from Win you need WinPro or Ent.

Just for an understanding - your request is similar to:
I need to create photos, what lens is better FishEye or fixed50?
Then you will get - everything is possible.

 

[moshimoshi]

It depends on the purpose ("photo catalog" isn't enough for consideration).

For single user:
Local (LAN) transfer doesn't need the sync. Mounting is quite better. In this case, is the Drive useless layer.
WAN sync has diff. requirements than LAN.
Btw, for NFS sync from Win you need WinPro or Ent.

Just for an understanding - your request is similar to:
I need to create photos, what lens is better FishEye or fixed50?
Then you will get - everything is possible.

Single LAN user, I will use the NAS to have another copy of my photos as a local backup.

 

[jeyare]

the PC OS?

 

[moshimoshi]

the PC OS?

Windows 10 Pro

 

[EAZ1964]

A sync is not a backup. If you mess up a file, your synced "backup" will be messed up within a few seconds as well ( i must also mention a ransomware).
A sync for 16TB will be quite demanding for both ends.

A backup would for sure be safer and more efficient.

 

[moshimoshi]

A sync is not a backup. If you mess up a file, your synced "backup" will be messed up within a few seconds as well ( i must also mention a ransomware).
A sync for 16TB will be quite demanding for both ends.

A backup would for sure be safer and more efficient.

I know, I will not keep my NAS on, only will turn it on for sync.
As I mentioned I have cloud backup using backblaze with snapshot support.
I was also thinking to enable snapshots on the NAS.

-- post merged: 29. Sep 2021 --

A sync is not a backup. If you mess up a file, your synced "backup" will be messed up within a few seconds as well ( i must also mention a ransomware).
A sync for 16TB will be quite demanding for both ends.

A backup would for sure be safer and more efficient.

I already tried backup using Synology ActiveBackup, after the first backup, each backup (with no new data to backup) took more than two days to complete! That´s why I´m asking. A sync is miles faster.

 

[jeyare]

Photo catalogue case:
only part of the catalogue is used at the time of editing, then the rest is always "cold=untouched".
Therefore it will not be constantly synced entire contents of the catalogue (just part from the 16TB).

Then you need:
1. Setup SMB or NFS Share in destination (NAS side)
2. Mount the Share in Win
3. Download, install SyncFolder at PC side:

SyncFolder - Official app in the Microsoft Store

A super simple app to backup / synchronize folders on Windows 10 and later, and import photos and videos from a camera or smartphone connected over USB or WiFi. With this app it is easy to make backup copies of your important files. SyncFolder ensures that all changes in important folders are...

www.microsoft.com

Setup Sync option (one way in your case).
Enjoy

Faster and better than Syno Drive for such purpose. Also for free. Include Smartphone photo backup (setup by QR code).

For durable backup, you need use Snap/Replica service at the NAS side (for the Share) = faster than from the PC to NAS.

 

[moshimoshi]

Thank you @jeyare ! I will try it and report back!

 

[jeyare]

You welcome.
Finally, someone came here who has a larger collection of photos and Win

When you need tuned workflow for photographers, you can find more here in this thread:

Best NAS for Capture One/Photo Editing

i7 in my description: - for the Thunderbolt 3.0 max performance coverage you need really strong performance from CPU. Reason why QNAP has i7 core inside.

www.synoforum.com

 

[EAZ1964]

As I mentioned I have cloud backup using backblaze with snapshot support.

I read the post 3 times but did not find you mentioning it, but that will work fine as a backup.

 

[moshimoshi]

I read the post 3 times but did not find you mentioning it, but that will work fine as a backup.

Sorry you are right, I though I mentioned. I have backblaze with version support plan.

 

[MamboMike]

Goodluck with the indexing.....

 

[jeyare]

Goodluck with the indexing.....

indexing in this case is out of scope and useless feature. only mad would do it or use SynoPhoto as base of such service.

 

[jeyare]

For better backup plan and this case point - heavy photo catalog:
16TB ~ over 335k of 50MB RAW files then with “standard” low end networking you will get max 70MB/s over 1Gbit LAN = 2.7 day for entire transfer from the PC to the NAS.
But this is just for an initial sync to the NAS. No need more dramatic transfers from the PC.
Then you can split these files in the NAS for:
- an occasional purposes- make this part as offline backup archive: independent external HDD (or more, up to you). Use it just for the incremental writing. This backup you will use in case of last possible restore step. From the photographer point of view those new increments will only be about modifying few old RAWs in the form of a new files or new RAW files. So there is no need to be worried about the older RAW files.
- frequent use - proposed NAS sync. Make regular snapshots from them as another backup stage.

For the critical running projects you can use C2 or BB cloud backup plans for the hot data from the frequent use part.

Then you will get:
- PC part of data
- NAS part of data
- snapshots in case of Ransomware attacks
- offline (cold) backup
- cloud backup.

 

[moshimoshi]

Goodluck with the indexing.....

I don´t care about indexing really, most of my photos are in raw and I use Lightroom.